In this paper, we study the impact of labor market restructuring and foreign direct investment on the banking sector, using a dynamic general equilibrium model with a financial sector.  Numerical simulations are performed using stylized Chinese data, and banks failures are generated through...

Edgworth's taxation paradox states that an excise tax can decrease the market price of a good.  This paper presents a new version of the paradox in which a tax reduces price because it attracts entry of additional firms into the market.  The paper also presents two new applications: (i) an...

Using a unique bank-level dataset on the Ugandan banking system over the period 1999 to 2005, we explore the factors behind consistently high interest rate spreads and margins. While foreign banks charge lower interest rate spreads, we do not find a robust and economically significant...

Conditionality is the most controversial aspect of the IMF`s policies. It has been said to be intrusive and coercive and considered to disregard effects on growth, employment and income distribution. In the 1990s, following a sharp increase in the number of conditions required by programs, Fund...

This paper studies how capital-scarce countries should manage volatile resource income.  Existing literature recommends that capital-scarce countries invest domestically, but that volatile resource income should be saved in a foreign sovereign wealth fund.  I reconcile these by combining a...

We review two proposals for debt forgiveness; the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) and the Jubilee 2000 Coalition Initiative (J2K). We then consider the workhorse model of debt forgiveness (Krugman 1988). We show that the workhorse model solution is a sub-optimal contract, where...

This paper explores the determinants of sovereign bond yields during the classical gold standard period (1872-1913). Using the Pooled Mean Group methodology, we find that the main benefit of the gold standard can be seen as a short-hand device that enhanced a country`s reputation in...

The half-century before World War I has been characterized as the first age of financial globalization. This paper focuses on the role and significance of the bondholders` organizations for the governance of this market. I argue that the outcome of these institutions depended on two dimensions:...

Macroeconomic volatility, in particular from exposure to volatile terms of trade in the form of volatile commodity prices, is an important source of risk for emerging market countries. As a consequence of this exposure, it has been argued, their probability of facing solvency problems on...